CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Quiet Muffin
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Sarita Rafferty
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Maniac-9
This is by no means what you'd consider a great mob movie. It says the basic time line of the rise of Lucky Luciano and associates. But none of the actors playing Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Frank Costello are all that believable as their characters. Honestly I think that those same characters are better represented on Boardwalk Empire when they're only side characters. Christian Slater is not very convincing as Luciano, to say the least.Is the movie out right terrible to Gigli, Battlefield Earth or something like that? No. But that doesn't change the fact that it comes no where close to accomplishing what it should be doing with these real life characters.
czarnobog
This movie is just plain awful. It's a textbook example of how "packaging" has ruined the art of film-making in Hollywood. It was obviously more important to the studio to fill up the screen with "bankable" stars than to make an intelligent, entertaining drama.The casting is horrible and the acting is strictly cornball. Anthony Quinn, that Swiss army knife of ethnic characterization, delivers yet another offensive, simplistic stereotype, a two-dimensional cartoon slob who stuffs his face with pasta and blubbers with faux emotion.The young stars who powered this fiasco into production are little better. The most notable aspect of their vapid portrayals are their glamorous but unbelievably pristine suits. In fairness, they've been given very little of substance to work with; did it really take two writers to butcher this story and concoct such clueless dialog? Luciano and Lansky were criminal geniuses in real life, smart enough to rule the underworld and avoid the long arm of the law, yet here they can best be described as "less dumb" than the rest of the idiots surrounding them.The worst crime committed by this movie is the screenplay, which wastes one of the most fascinating and dramatic episodes in the history of crime, the Castellammarese Wars that rocked New York in the late 1920s and solidified the structure of the modern American mafia. Typical of its idiocy is the misnaming of Maranzano as Faranzano. Apparently some wise old development exec decided that having two of the key characters with names that began with "Ma" was simply too confusing, so they kept Masseria and renamed Maranzano. There are several other inaccuracies as well. The movie is more fiction than fact, and not good fiction at that. It adds nothing of value to the body of gangland cinema.The beauty of "The Godfather" was that the writer researched the story he was telling and translated it into an epic tale that captured the spirit and reality of the mafia, changing the names of the characters but preserving the essence of their experience. "Mobsters" kept the names and threw everything else out the window.On top of all that, even the action sucked.That said, there is one redeeming moment in the movie. The chorus girls dancing in the club looked great and the dance routine was fairly good. Too bad it wasn't 90 minutes longer.
horatiusx-1
The movie tells the early story of Lucky Luciano until his final admittance in the Mafia organization. It's not so bad to watch, but lacks quality... many fire battles are resolved as in the worst action movies: too many times we see people avoiding the huge firepower of a Thompson just running with head low. It's one of that movies where enemies can't fire, while the protagonist and his friends never fail a shot. More: the story of Lucky Luciano is depicted as children story, with incongruence and simplifications, the characters are fully bi dimensional. If you're not great fans of Mob stories (as I am) you should watch something different, like ...mmm... The Godfather???
carolynay
I really enjoyed watching this movie. Everyone says that the characters were too young, but that's how young Lucky and the guys really were. Christian Slater was actually a couple of years older than Lucky at the time the movie was set. The age of the characters adds to the amazing ability of the kids to "succeed" the way that they did. All in all, the movie was a lot of fun. Even if you don't care for the movie itself, you can definitely appreciate the determination of these four guys and the power and strength of their friendship. The movie is fast paced and fun to watch, so it does a great job of keeping you entertained. It doesn't hurt to have four hot guys with power and guns, either.